"We think its a nuisance that so many European languages assigngender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons andmale boats and such. But actually, its us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family  Indo-European  and of allof them, English is the only one that doesnt assign genders thatway."

They overlook Afrikaans. And their statement contradicts what elsethey write:

"Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good Europeanlanguage  but the Scandies didnt bother with those, and so now wehave none. "

So then why does Icelandic (first attested in the 12th century) stillhave all 3 genders, 2 numbers and 4 cases? As had Old-English.

"We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assigngender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons andmale boats and such. But actually, it’s us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of allof them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders thatway."

Not to speak of Farsi, Armenian, Bengali, and some varieties of Kurdish.

They overlook Afrikaans. And their statement contradicts what else"Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good Europeanlanguage – but the Scandies didn’t bother with those, and so now wehave none. "So then why does Icelandic (first attested in the 12th century) stillhave all 3 genders, 2 numbers and 4 cases? As had Old-English.

Island Scandinavian (Icelandic and Faroese) is somewhat special andarchaic, but mainland Scandinavian has also kept at least a 2-gendersystem (locally also 3-gender).

And the story about the Celtic numbers is also questionable, given thevarious lists of small numbers in many languages.

"We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assigngender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons andmale boats and such. But actually, it’s us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of allof them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders thatway."

Not to speak of Farsi, Armenian, Bengali, and some varieties of Kurdish.

Sorani, the dominant version of Kurdish in Iraq, the usual writtenlanguage of Iraqi Kurdistan (though the northern parts speek Kurmanji)does npt have gender, except it seems natural gender in the vocative.

They overlook Afrikaans. And their statement contradicts what else"Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good Europeanlanguage – but the Scandies didn’t bother with those, and so now wehave none. "So then why does Icelandic (first attested in the 12th century) stillhave all 3 genders, 2 numbers and 4 cases? As had Old-English.

Island Scandinavian (Icelandic and Faroese) is somewhat special andarchaic, but mainland Scandinavian has also kept at least a 2-gendersystem (locally also 3-gender).And the story about the Celtic numbers is also questionable, given thevarious lists of small numbers in many languages.--Helmut Richter

male boats and such. But actually, it’s us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of allof them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders thatway."

Not to speak of Farsi, Armenian, Bengali, and some varieties of Kurdish.

But those aren't European languages.Let's not castigate McWhorter for a claim he didn't make.

male boats and such. But actually, it’s us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of allof them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders thatway."

Not to speak of Farsi, Armenian, Bengali, and some varieties of Kurdish.

But those aren't European languages.Let's not castigate McWhorter for a claim he didn't make.

Yes, I mistook "all of them" as referring to "one family –Indo-European" and not to "languages that are both European andIndo-European". I am not sure whether the sentence is unambiguous.

male boats and such. But actually, its us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family  Indo-European  and of allof them, English is the only one that doesnt assign genders thatway."

Not to speak of Farsi, Armenian, Bengali, and some varieties of Kurdish.

But those aren't European languages.Let's not castigate McWhorter for a claim he didn't make.

Yes, I mistook "all of them" as referring to "one family Indo-European" and not to "languages that are both European andIndo-European".

it's a long-established feature of official historiography to present Protestants as "victims".Protestants probably killed more and burned more in France than Republicans themselves ever did. And that is no feat to be underestimated.A.

I quoted a line from a rather weak article on the nature and historyof English, and you call me the Devil because of that.What kind of a person are you? You are lucky that I believe in God nor*sh*ayTaan, but I do understand what YOU mean by such an outrageousaccusation.--Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

it's a long-established feature of official historiography to present Protestants as "victims".Protestants probably killed more and burned more in France than Republicans themselves ever did. And that is no feat to be underestimated.

I quoted a line from a rather weak article on the nature and historyof English, and you call me the Devil because of that.What kind of a person are you? You are lucky that I believe in God nor*sh*ayTaan, but I do understand what YOU mean by such an outrageousaccusation.--Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Post by Ruud Harmsen"Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good Europeanlanguage  but the Scandies didnt bother with those, and so now wehave none. "So then why does Icelandic (first attested in the 12th century) stillhave all 3 genders, 2 numbers and 4 cases? As had Old-English.

He doesn't mean that Old Norse had no genders, but that the Vikings,when they imperfectly learned Old English as a second language,dispensed with the gender system.

"We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assigngender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons andmale boats and such. But actually, it’s us who are odd: almost allEuropean languages belong to one family – Indo-European – and of allof them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders thatway."

As for the moon I have a Magdalenian explanation. Marie E.P. König identifiedthe bull of cave paintings, for example Lascaux, as moon bull, and the sunas sun horse. For the winter sun horse I propose CA LAB, sky cold, wherefromgallop and German Klepper; for the spring sun horse CA BEL, sky warm, ina longer form CA BEL IAS, sky warm healing, the spring sun horse healingailments of a long and harsh winter, ABelios AFelios Helios, the Greek sungod with his quadriga of horses; and the summer sun horse CA BAL, sky hot,wherefrom Latin caballus Italian cavallo French cheval Spanish caballo(the Latin word not yet explained, says my dictionary). Now for the moon.There are six words for the lunar phases, for example GEN for the threedays of the young moon, a word present in genesis, and NEG for the threedays of the old moon, accounting for negation. Then there is LUN for a fullround form, accounting for Italian la luna French la lune, and CA LUN,sky CA of the full round form LUN for the full moon, accounting for GreekSelene. Note the shift from the bull to the moon goddesses Luna and Selene.Words carry a long history with them.

Post by Franz GnaedingerAs for the moon I have a Magdalenian explanation. Marie E.P. König identifiedthe bull of cave paintings, for example Lascaux, as moon bull, and the sunas sun horse. For the winter sun horse I propose CA LAB, sky cold, wherefromgallop and German Klepper; for the spring sun horse CA BEL, sky warm, ina longer form CA BEL IAS, sky warm healing, the spring sun horse healingailments of a long and harsh winter, ABelios AFelios Helios, the Greek sungod with his quadriga of horses; and the summer sun horse CA BAL, sky hot,wherefrom Latin caballus Italian cavallo French cheval Spanish caballo(the Latin word not yet explained, says my dictionary). Now for the moon.There are six words for the lunar phases, for example GEN for the threedays of the young moon, a word present in genesis, and NEG for the threedays of the old moon, accounting for negation. Then there is LUN for a fullround form, accounting for Italian la luna French la lune, and CA LUN,sky CA of the full round form LUN for the full moon, accounting for GreekSelene. Note the shift from the bull to the moon goddesses Luna and Selene.Words carry a long history with them.

By the way, the inverse of LUN for a full round form is NUL for an emptyround form, indicating the empty moon, German Leermond, opposite of thefull moon, accounting for French nul 'none, nothing, invalid, unimportant'German Null 'zero' English null and nullity Italian nulla 'nothing or alittle thing' Latin nihil 'nothing'. Hindu mathematicians introduced zeroas a cipher (and not just as place value) in the 9th century AD and gaveit as a small circle o which might well have been inspired by the emptymoon. - Still fascinated by how many information words carry when studiedas as groups and not just as single words.

McWhorter originally wrote a more scholarly article on that topic,"What happened to English?". I remember reading it online, but Ican't find a freely available copy now. Pity.

The article above is his pop-sci treatment of the topic, so itsuffers from oversimplification, overgeneralization (McWhorter mayhave never zapped into a French TV channel when a spelling bee wason, but I have), lack of rigor (notice how he wildly shifts hispoint of comparison), addresses an audience that knows very littleabout languages or the history of English, and pushes some of hispet ideas. The hook of English being somehow "unique" fits in wellwith the understanding of American exceptionalism that's pervasiveamong the intended audience. It's on par with the usual drivelthat is filling the "science" section of newspapers and magazines.Don't take it too seriously.

Post by Ruud HarmsenDid you know that using the verb 'to do' for questions and negationdid not originate in English but is from Celtic?

I'm aware that some people are pushing this claim. I find itunconvincing. I don't know the Celtic languages, which may influencemy opinion, but I'm under the impression little is known in generalabout Celtic at the time this language contact would have happened.

Periphrastic do is NOT unusual in West Germanic. Even standardGerman resorts to it when you want to put the verb first for emphasis.Say, you want to criticize the comprehensibility of Chomsky'slatest writing:Verstehen tut man das nicht.Uses of periphrastic do similar to that in English are floatingaround in the German dialectosphere. Of course that is not somethingyou'll find in a textbook sketch of German grammar.

Oh, people are on and off attributing features of French to Gaulish,too. Or Frankish.

Generally speaking, it seems very hard to prove or disprove any ofthis. There is a remarkable lack of falsifiability. The problemis that most of our understanding of language change is descriptive;we see what is happening, but there is no comprehensive theory thatcan explain how and why or make predictions. Some processes arebeing elucidated, but it's bits and pieces.

McWhorter may be right with his assertion that it is strange thatEnglish marks the third person singular present tense. But does ahistoric accident make for a deep mystery? The most interestingquestion, to my mind, is why English maintains this personal marker.Some nonstandard varieties of English drop it, but overall -s ishanging on. There must be some pressure to keep the distinction.A lesser question is how Northern -s replaced original -th in thatposition. Since it came from the North, blaming the Vikings seemssafe, but the details are murky, starting with the fact that OldNorse certainly didn't have -s as a personal marker. Also, Northernuse of -s exists in different patterns that don't necessarily agreewith Modern Standard English. Possibly the least interestingquestion is how among all the personal markers only -th survived.A simple sound change may have killed all but -st and -th, and -stdisappeared when "you" displaced "thou".

Which brings me to my very own pet hypothesis about what happenedto English. I'll point out right away that I know virtually nothingabout Middle English. This is bad because it means I may be spoutingnonsense. But it is also good, because it makes my idea falsifiable.Somebody who knows Middle English can look at it and say whetherit agrees with what is known.

If you look at the inflections of Old English and what remains in(Early) Modern English, how do you get from one to the other? First,you collapse all unstressed vowels in the endings to schwa. (Let'sspell it -e-.) That's exactly what also marks the transition fromOld High German to Middle High German, and weakening of unstressedvowels is an ordinary sound change. Then the crucial step: lossof final -e and -en, again a simple sound change. Denasalizationof syllabic n to schwa, loss of final schwa. Removing -e and -enwith their high functional load has enormous consequences:* In the verb system, you immediately get the survival of thepersonal endings of Early Modern English: -st, -th.* The whole system of determiner/adjective marking for gender andcase collapses. Remaining endings like -es and -er can't carrythe load and are leveled out.* The two most common plural endings disappear, clearing the wayfor -(e)s to spread through the noun system.I don't know if that's what happened, but it would explain a lot.Incidentally, without resorting to putative Celtic or Norse influence.

Oh, that article again.McWhorter originally wrote a more scholarly article on that topic,"What happened to English?". I remember reading it online, but Ican't find a freely available copy now. Pity.The article above is his pop-sci treatment of the topic, so itsuffers from oversimplification, overgeneralization (McWhorter mayhave never zapped into a French TV channel when a spelling bee wason, but I have), lack of rigor (notice how he wildly shifts hispoint of comparison), addresses an audience that knows very littleabout languages or the history of English, and pushes some of hispet ideas. The hook of English being somehow "unique" fits in wellwith the understanding of American exceptionalism that's pervasiveamong the intended audience. It's on par with the usual drivelthat is filling the "science" section of newspapers and magazines.Don't take it too seriously.

Post by Ruud HarmsenDid you know that using the verb 'to do' for questions and negationdid not originate in English but is from Celtic?

I'm aware that some people are pushing this claim. I find itunconvincing. I don't know the Celtic languages, which may influencemy opinion, but I'm under the impression little is known in generalabout Celtic at the time this language contact would have happened.Periphrastic do is NOT unusual in West Germanic.

It sometimes occurs in colloquial Dutch. I doubt if that's under theinfluence of English.

Post by Christian WeisgerberEven standardGerman resorts to it when you want to put the verb first for emphasis.Say, you want to criticize the comprehensibility of Chomsky'sVerstehen tut man das nicht.

Echt begrijpen doe ik dat niet. Well, I do, this is a very goodexample.

Post by Christian WeisgerberUses of periphrastic do similar to that in English are floatingaround in the German dialectosphere. Of course that is not somethingyou'll find in a textbook sketch of German grammar.

Post by Ruud HarmsenDid you know that using the verb 'to do' for questions and negationdid not originate in English but is from Celtic?https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languagesIf so, why doesn't French (Vulgar Latin on a Gaulic substrate) havethat too?

You forget Islandic. Genetics shows that Iceland was settledprincipally by Norwegian men who brought along Irish women. Aconstellation that clearly indicates that Icelandic must show strongCeltic influence... uh... uhm... well...

Post by Ruud HarmsenDid you know that using the verb 'to do' for questions and negationdid not originate in English but is from Celtic?https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages

Post by Ruud HarmsenDid you know that using the verb 'to do' for questions and negationdid not originate in English but is from Celtic?https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages